


spaces between

by reciprocity



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, M/M, Reincarnation - of a sort, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 09:33:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11377443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reciprocity/pseuds/reciprocity
Summary: Yuuri dreams. In these dreams, he sees a frozen lake, and a small, golden string, tied to the third finger of his right hand, leading out to nowhere. He imagines that there is something, someone, waiting at the other end of it, pulling him into the darkness, urging him forward.He always wakes up before he can reach the other end.





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**Author's Note:**

> This is a very loose AU inspired by / based off of (the beginning of) Hwei Lim's webcomic, [HERO](http://invisiblecities.comicgenesis.com/). Absolutely no prior knowledge of the series is needed to understand any of this story, though I would highly recommend checking it out anyway because both the artwork and prose are absolutely stunning.

Yuuri dreams of a frozen lake.

He doesn’t know where it is, or how he himself has gotten to be there. In his dream, it is always dark, and silent. His feet are bare, and the ice cold beneath them, though not in the painful way he thinks it likely should be.

Beneath the ice, he thinks he can make out movement, vague and faint in the dim, blurred through the scratches left on the ground. He doesn’t look too closely, otherwise preoccupied.

Around the third finger of his right hand, is a small, golden string, leading out to nowhere. He follows it; he imagines, sometimes, that there is something, some _one_ , at the other end of it, pulling him forward into the darkness, urging him to the other side of the lake.

Yuuri always wakes before he can reach the other end.

* * *

Yuuri has lived in the sleepy town of Hasetsu as far back as he can remember. Before even then.

For most of that time, he had lived in his parent’s inn, growing up around his reserved mother and father, sharp older sister, and the much louder patrons of their establishment.

He cannot recall exactly how old he was when the decision was made that it was time for him to move out, or who had even had the final say in it. He doesn’t doubt that his mother’s best friend, Okukawa Minako, had more than a hand in the process, though.

Minako, Yuuri had known for as long as he had ever known anything, was a witch. The kind that used her magic for small things, mainly, like fixing a broken teacup, or creating ale that tasted better than any regular craftsman’s around (according to Minako herself, at least).

Yuuri had one particular memory, hazy and mostly forgotten, of a badly sprained ankle, the result of an ill-thought out game of hide and seek around the outdoor baths where he and Mari sometimes played, and of Minako holding his hand through the worst of it, the sharp pain dulling beneath her hand, the woman’s face twisted into an unfamiliar, pinched frown.

Once Yuuri had reached the age that someone at some time had decided was old enough, he had moved in with Minako, objectively to become her student. (Personally, Yuuri thought the word _assistant_ would be more appropriate, but no one asked him. Rarely, these days, did anyone ask Yuuri anything). Mari, much more diligent in her household duties and suited to the needs of the inn, had stayed behind.

It had been an _opportunity_ , according to his mother. His father had patted him on the back and said it would be _an exciting life_. Minako had called it an _expectation_ , for someone with the burgeoning magical talent Yuuri allegedly possessed.

Yuuri, who had not been looking for an opportunity, nor had he ever wished for a more exciting life, and feared failing what was expected of him more than anything, had been quietly relieved when his sister, who had always known him best, only heaved a sigh and dragged him into a one-armed hug half a second too short, not uttering a word as three-fourths of the only family he had ever known waved to him goodbye. 

That had been years ago now. Yuuri thinks it was, at least. Time passes strangely here, in the tiny, two-story cottage he and his would-be teacher share. Mari writes, sometimes, and Hiroko keeps in regular contact with Minako, he knows, though he rarely inquires the details of their communication. He misses the inn, he thinks, in his own particular, quiet way.

He likes Minako’s place well enough still. It’s small, but homely; messier than it should be, given how easy it would be for either of its occupants to clean up. The doors creak slightly on their hinges, and the floorboards below the stairs moan if stepped on too heavily.

It is _familiar_ , and Yuuri, above anything else, clings to familiarity like his only remaining lifeline.

A month after Yuuri movies in, Minako corners him, and shoves into his hands what seems to be a tiny, wriggling ball of fur.

“Every witch needs an animal,” she tells him, and Yuuri is immediately ready to turn her down, terrified at the prospect of being responsible for such a small, delicate living being.

The puppy nuzzles into his palm, nose wet and eyes still sealed shut, and the protest dies on Yuuri’s lips. _Vicchan_ , he names them, a name both familiar and not, and by the time a week has passed and tiny eyes have blinked open to the world, Yuuri is in love.

Vicchan studiously avoids Minako’s cat, eats more than seems possible given his tiny, wobbly frame, and wakes Yuuri up every morning with a sharp yipping that Yuuri typically finds endearing, given that he hasn’t drunk too much of Minako’s ale the night prior.

It is this particular noise, or the surprising lack of it, that wakes Yuuri on one particular gray morning.

Upon blinking his bleary eyes open, Yuuri is aware of two facts: one, that it is much later than his usual mornings begin, and two, that Vicchan is no longer in the bed beside him, where he has always slept, and did in fact fall asleep last night.

Yuuri groans tiredly and fumbles for his glasses. Once they are situated over the bridge of his nose, he scans the room around himself, looking for any signs of Vicchan, or his unwarranted exit from the bed. Finding none, he shuffles out the cracked-open door, stumbles his way down the short set of stairs leading to his room, and finds Minako in their tiny mess of a kitchen.

“Yuuri! You’re up late today,” Minako greets, cheerful with an undercurrent of scolding.

Yuuri has little time to feel guilty. “Vicchan,” he mumbles, and then, when that only earns him a blank stare, he clarifies. “Is gone.”

Minako blinks, a second time, and then waves a hand, flippant. The sponge and dish she had been hovering over the sink clatter against the counter as they abruptly fall. “Oh, yes, he wanted to go out for a walk earlier so I let him out.” Another pause, and then her features rearrange themselves in a look Yuuri knows much too well. “Really, Yuuri, you shouldn’t rely on him so much. You missed breakfast and another lesson sleeping in like you did.”

Yuuri doesn’t bother to ask how Minako had known Vicchan had wanted a walk, or apologizing for his missed morning. Another failed expectation.

Instead, he nods in her vague direction, and heads to the front door.

The salt breeze instantly lays into Yuuri’s bones as soon as he’s pulled it open, dressed in only a thin shirt and pair of baggy shorts as he is. He thinks of calling out for his dog, but knows he likely won’t respond; unless he’s close enough by to hear his actual voice, Yuuri and his bond is currently too weak for any sort of clear communication. He’s missed one too many of Minako’s lessons.

Yuuri trudges out onto the tall grass surrounding Minako’s home— his home— and squints into the middle distance. He thinks, maybe, he can hear a dog barking, some ways off. Too deep to be Vicchan, but it wouldn’t surprise Yuuri if he had run off to investigate whatever foreign animal had come this far from Hasetsu proper.

Huffing a quiet sigh, Yuuri turns toward the noise, ready to set off, when something stops him. A familiar yet unfamiliar pull, like the tide, or a string wrapped around his wrist.

It stops him short. Urges him forward, but Yuuri feels his heart beating in his chest uncomfortably fast, uncertain and off-balance, and he digs his heels into the soft dirt beneath him. He calls out to Vicchan silently, expects nothing in answer.

The pressure around his wrist lessens as quickly as it had started. Yuuri stares down at his own hand, and wonders.

Vicchan comes bounding back to the house some minutes later, finding Yuuri sitting on the front porch steps, staring out at the ocean waves.

Yuuri wishes he had paid more attention to Minako’s lectures on familiars. He knows Vicchan and he share a bond, the same way Minako and her tabby share one; there has never been a doubt of those facts, but sometimes Yuuri feels that Vicchan belongs more to himself than he does to anyone else. The same way Yuuri belongs to only himself, but sometimes wishes he belonged to someone else.

That maybe, at the end of his string, was another person, urging him forward, instead of it all just being some silly dream.

Yuuri shakes off such thoughts, and scoops Vicchan up in his arms. “You shouldn’t leave without waking me next time,” he scolds, gently. Vicchan blinks up at him with soft, knowing eyes, and then licks an undignified stripe up Yuuri’s jaw.

The rest of the day goes by, business as usual, though there is something humming quietly in Yuuri’s chest throughout. A flash of restlessness he hasn’t felt since back at his family’s inn, when Mari had begun settling into her role as their parents’ successor, Yuuri watching from the sidelines, useless as ever.

He doesn’t examine the feeling now too closely.

Yuuri tries to pay attention during his afternoon lesson, Minako showing him how to cool and heat various items, mostly food, with a single, tiny released breath. Yuuri fails most of his attempts, and Minako is patient, but relentless.

Once evening begins to set in, Minako leaves. Yuuri doesn’t ask her where she’s going, but she offers up the information nonetheless.

“I’ll be down at the Nishigori’s.” A pause, and then a meaningful look Yuuri mostly successfully dodges. “You know, they’d love to have you join us. They’ve mentioned it.”

Yuuri hums something noncommittal. Minako sighs, and lets him be.

He reads from the small stack of books he’s accumulated from Minako’s library over the years. He’s read every book in the house at least twice— Minako is not much of a reader, or a collector.

This one in particular is one of his favorites: a book of poems, most of them fairly nonsensical, but beautifully written in a way that makes his chest ache. He thinks, probably, the author has had his heart broken, maybe more than once. He thinks it should make him sad, to think of loves won and lost, but instead he thinks it sounds incredible; to have been someone’s something, to have been someone’s everything, even if only just for a while.

He falls asleep with the lamp still on, Vicchan curled tightly against his side.

* * *

He dreams of the ocean, frozen over solid, waves caught in perfect crests, entirely still. He looks down at his right hand, and sees the string there, extending out, alien and strange and exactly where he feels it belongs.

He looks out over the frozen water, into the pitch, and takes a single, purposeful step forward.

* * *

Yuuri wakes the next morning to Vicchan’s yapping. The dog noses into the exposed skin over Yuuri’s collarbone, impatience radiating off him in waves, and Yuuri mutters, “Alright, alright,” as he props himself up on his elbows, blindly reaching for blue frames.

When he makes his way down the stairs a few minutes later, Vicchan curled comfortably in his arms, he finds Minako in the exact place she was the day before (and the day before, and the day before).

This time, though, she has her arms up, fingers of one hand extended carefully as she guides the toast into the toaster, and flicks her other wrist to stir pancake mix into batter (Yuuri knows she doesn’t make them from complete scratch, though he has been _strongly advised_ not to share such information with the local clientele that sometimes drops by).

“Yuuri! You’re up early today!” she chirps, cheery and much too enthusiastic for the indeed early hour.

A second later, she pauses, hands stilling in the air, and turns a small frown Yuuri’s way. “Did you sleep alright last night?” she asks, apropos of nothing.

Yuuri blinks, and feels a tiny shiver run through him. “Yes,” he answers, but the edge of his own mouth tugs down. Something feels — off, this morning. Similar to the day before, but somehow more.

Minako gives him an assessing look, and then turns abruptly away, resuming her task. “Well. Good.”

They eat their breakfasts together in companionable enough silence. Minako pretends to miss the way Yuuri slips Vicchan a few bites of his egg, and Yuuri pretends to not hear Minako’s overly generous praise of how Yuuri had performed during yesterday’s lesson.

“You’re really getting somewhere, Yuuri. I know it must be dull, stuck doing idle housework, but you have to start with the basics, if you want to get anywhere, you know. Hiroko and I were talking just last —”

“I’m going down to the beach today.” Yuuri doesn’t mean to interrupt, but he also doesn’t particularly want to hear the end of that sentence either. He misses his mother, in a sharp, stinging way, and he can’t— He can’t handle this, today, on top of everything else muddling up his thoughts.

Minako looks at him, surprised. Her gaze is piercing, scrutinizing, and Yuuri wants to squirm under it like he’s still a child, afraid of the inevitable lecture to come.

Instead, Minako’s eyes soften, and she nods, lips pressed tightly together. “Alright, Yuuri.” She stands, brushing crumbs off of her lap that Yuuri will have to sweep up later.

Yuuri starts when, instead of making her way to the sink to start in on the dishes as he had expected, Minako stoops low, and presses a quick, fleeting kiss to the skin just below his right eye.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” she says, voice unusually soft. And then she’s smiling down at him, easy and sharp and familiar as ever.

Yuuri feels something shift in his chest, and he smiles back, much more tentative, the slightest of weights easing from his shoulders.

He scoops Vicchan up off the tile a minute later, and goes to open the front door.

“It’s your turn for the dishes today, Yuuri!” Minako calls after him. “Don’t forget!”

Yuuri lets the door fall shut behind him. Breathes in the sea air, thick and already warming.

As he makes his way down the stone path, he doesn’t make a point of not looking back at the cottage, and the small village beyond. He keeps his eyes forward, anyway, feeling the slightest bit afraid that if he does turn back, he will be compelled to retrace his steps, all the way back to his bedroom and under his covers.

His steps are precise and steady, and Vicchan is a comfort in his arms. Yuuri feels a persistent pull at the edges of himself, and though he doesn’t know where it is leading him, or why, he follows it.

The sky over the beach is gray and unclear when Yuuri arrives. He sets Vicchan down onto the sand, and watches as he immediately runs out to the edge of the surf, snapping at the tiny, bright fish swimming in the shallows.

Yuuri squints up at the sky, lazily stretching out his limbs.

There isn’t much to actually _do_ here, but Yuuri finds it relaxing exactly for that reason— the gulls don’t expect anything of him, nor do the impassive waves, rising and falling in a steady, unshakeable rhythm. The occasional salt spray against his face is cooling, calming. Yuuri lays himself out on the dryest patch of ground he can find, and drifts, for some amount of time.

Farther along the coast is a solitary, silent watchtower. Yuuri has never been inside of it; he doesn’t think anyone has been in many, many years.

Today he finds his eye drawn to its crumbling facade, its single, locked door.

Yuuri knows the door is locked, because he had tried it, exactly once, the first time he had wandered down the path from Minako’s home. He looks at the huge, arching windows, long since shattered and standing empty, and thinks, for a second, that he might be seeing— something. A flash of silver.

He sits up, too fast and his head aches slightly with the movement. His right wrist throbs.

Yuuri doesn’t call to Vicchan as he wanders down the coast; he is careful to keep his dog in his peripheral as he goes.

He arrives at the door to the watchtower, splintered wood and a rusty knob waiting there, just as they had been all those years ago. He reaches out, tentative, careful, with his magic. Runs imaginary fingertips around the edges of it, testing its weight and heft.

Yuuri thinks, it would not be so hard to break it down.

The door is locked; Yuuri has tried it himself, and no one else has been here in the time since. 

For some reason, inexplicable as his dreams, or the feelings boiling over in his chest, Yuuri tries the handle.

Only to have the door sweep inwards without preamble. Yuuri hadn’t even gotten the chance to turn his wrist.

He peers into the round room inside. It is about what he had expected— dusty, and dark, dim morning light filtering in through the old window frames. It smells vaguely of mold, and, strangely enough, of fresh cut roses.

“Юра?” A voice asks, from directly behind Yuuri.

Yuuri whips around on his heels, heart in his throat.

Before him stands a man. A tall man— a few inches taller than Yuuri, at least— with bright blue eyes and hair the colour of the moon. His face is pulled into slight confusion, and Yuuri thinks, inexplicably enough, hopefulness. He is also, without a doubt, the most beautiful person Yuuri has ever laid eyes on.

Yuuri, startled, lets go of the protective spell he had pulled around himself the moment before.

“Who— who are you? What are you doing here?” he asks, shoulders slowly lowering. 

The man blinks, brows furrowing in the middle of his forehead. Yuuri realizes he is speaking in Japanese still, and the man doesn’t look Japanese, and the language he had briefly spoken before had certainly been strange to Yuuri.

“English?” Yuuri asks, twisting his fingers together, a nervous tick.

The man smiles, suddenly, brightly, and Yuuri’s heart stutters in his chest. _Oh_.

“Yes, English!” the man agrees with enthusiasm.

Yuuri nods, nonsensically, and then realizes himself. He can feel his cheeks heating slightly under the other’s gaze as he repeats his question from before, in English this time. “Who are you?”

“Ah, my name is Viktor,” the stranger tells him. _Viktor_. The name is odd. Foreign. Yuuri feels another small hitch in his chest. His fingertips twitch against his palm. “And you would be?”

“Yuuri,” Yuuri answers, and watches the man— Viktor, register this with an inscrutable look.

“ _Yuuri_ ,” he repeats, and gets the pronunciation right on the first try, to Yuuri’s surprise. “That’s a lovely name.” Yuuri’s blush makes a fierce return. “And what would you happen to be doing out here, _Yuu_ ri?”

 _That’s my question_ , Yuuri thinks, and doesn’t bother to answer. He looks Viktor over, slower this time, with his heart back in its chest where it belongs. He glances over the man’s shoulder, wondering not for the first time where had come from.

He spots Vicchan out by the water, still dancing around the shallows on quick, knowing paws. A few hundred paces away, he finds his answer in the huge, black motorbike parked just beyond the surf’s edge.

He briefly wonders how he hadn’t heard the sound of a running engine for a bike that size, but shakes the thought off a moment later when he feels a soft touch against his arm.

His gaze snaps up to Viktor’s, and his heart beats quick and arrhythmic for a different reason now.

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, and every time he says it, Yuuri feels something hot and prickling against his skin. Like Viktor isn’t just saying a name, but pulling something out of Yuuri’s chest with every utterance. As if he _knows_ Yuuri, already, somehow, and the look in his eyes as he says it is asking to be known in return.

Yuuri takes one step backwards. He’s nearly completely inside the watchtower now, surrounded on all sides without an easy exit. Viktor’s eyes are bright and feel like a physical touch where they trace over his skin.

“Why are you here?” He hears himself asking without having planned to have asked. He feels like, somehow, he already knows the answer, before Viktor gives it in the form of a shrug. He thinks, he might already know whatever Viktor is about to say, will be a lie.

“I was just passing through.” Viktor looks at Yuuri like he’s expecting to be called out. Hoping for it, even.

And then: “Did you need a ride somewhere?”

Yuuri jolts, surprise clear in his dark eyes. “I— A ride?”

Viktor shrugs, again, nonchalant in the way of someone trying very hard to appear nonchalant. He gestures vaguely over his shoulder to the motorcar. “Yes, a ride. Are you going somewhere?”

Yuuri hasn’t gone anywhere in a very long time. He huffs a sigh, and then, gathering himself, shoves past Viktor, out of the lighthouse, and back out onto the windy beach.

Vicchan, he discovers, has finally made his way away from the water, and the little dog immediately jumps up on Yuuri’s legs once he’s gotten close enough. Yuuri picks him up, unheeding of the dog’s soggy paws.

From beside him, Viktor coos, and reaches out a hand to scratch behind Vicchan’s ears. “Oh, how cute! Is he yours?”

“Yes,” Yuuri answers, more curt than he means to.

“He’s beautiful,” Viktor says, and Yuuri thinks about names, and their similarities as well as their differences.

The old pressure in his chest feels fit to burst now. Yuuri watches Viktor rub gentle circles into his dog’s fur, and thinks, _you are_.

“Where are you going?” Yuuri asks, a few quiet minutes later.

Viktor hums, presses a finger to his lips. “I’m not sure yet. I haven’t decided,” he says, as if that’s an answer at all. 

From the look on the other man’s face, Yuuri thinks, he might know the emotion hiding there all too well himself.

Yuuri studies Viktor for a moment longer, and then turns to the sea. There are gulls crying, and the hushed, static sound of crashing waves in the near distance, all familiar.

He thinks of Minako, waiting for him at home, just up the hill; he remembers her saying goodbye, and pressing her lips to his cheek not an hour ago.

He looks again to Viktor, tall and placid and waiting for his own answer. Hair whips around his face from the seaside breeze, the only part of him currently moving. Yuuri has never seen anyone with his particular colour of hair in real life before. He’s never seen a skyscraper building, or gotten lost in a crowd, or even ridden in a car on an actual paved road.

Viktor looks back at Yuuri, and Yuuri _wants_.

“I want to see a city,” he blurts out, unthinking. His cheeks flush hotly in embarrassment.

Viktor stares at him for a beat, and then laughs. The sound is light and airy, and Yuuri would probably like it a lot more if it weren’t being directed at himself.

“You live in a city,” is all Viktor says, when he finally does respond, and Yuuri shakes his head, eyes flickering down and away from the too-bright smile on the stranger’s face.

“No, I mean. A real city. With tall buildings, and more than _one_ place to eat, and _one_ tailor, and _one lousy inn_.” He doesn’t mean the last part— enough of him is feeling vitriolic, a thin, uncomfortable buzz setting off under his skin, resentment not at his parents or the onsen or even Hasetsu itself, but rather at himself, for only now realizing just how sheltered he has been, for as long as he can remember; longer. A self-imposed exile from the rest of the world.

He thinks about being _old enough_ and of expectations, and the opportunity to shed them.

When Yuuri looks back up, the smile is gone from Viktor’s face, instead replaced with a thoughtful squint. “Fair enough, Yuuri,” he says, eventually, something new and indistinguishable in his eyes.

Yuuri nods, at Viktor, and then again in the direction of his motorbike. “Will you take me with you then?”

They lock eyes again, and Yuuri feels that old, familiar pull at his hand. It gives him the strength to hold Viktor’s gaze this time, makes him feel bolder than he is.

Viktor smiles, and it’s softer now, more genuine, reaching his eyes and highlighting the tiny crow's feet at the edges there.

“Of course. I offered, didn’t I,” he says, not quite a question, and holds out a hand.

Yuuri takes it, and feels something in his chest pull taut, and then, slowly, begin to unfurl.

**Author's Note:**

> Any sort of feedback would be appreciated, whether it be praise or concrit! This is the first multi-chaptered story with a plot I've published in.... years, and on top of that I haven't written anything quite so flowery in a long while, so I'm likely more than rusty.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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